I glance out the window, cupping my elbows. In the distance, a black car is leaving the property through the front gate. It has to be him.
You can come back, Antonio, but I won’t be here when you do. I hope you enjoyed the kiss, because that’s all you’re ever getting from me.
13
Antonio
Thiago, my longtime driver, is waiting with the car outside D’Sousa’s front door.
“The helipad?” he asks, as I climb into the vehicle.
“Yes.”Before I go back into that house, peel off those skin-tight riding breeches, and fuck her against the wall like an animal.One damn kiss, and I’m still having trouble getting my body under control, like I’m a goddamn teenager.
She’s trouble.
“I have a meeting in an hour.”
“Traffic’s light,” Thiago tells me, as he engages the privacy screen. “We’ll have you back in plenty of time.”
When the screen is all the way up, I call the villa. It’s not much of a villa, but more of a cave equipped with state-of-the-art technology. It’s accessible only to Cristiano, Lucas, and me.
“I’m on my way back,” I mutter, knowing they have me on speaker.
“We expected to hear from you sooner. Problems?”
“She’s leaving Porto, just as we thought. She concocted a whole bullshit story about a trip to Canada to tell her father’s elderly aunt that he died.”
“The aunt with end-stage Alzheimer’s who no longer speaks or recognizes anyone?”
Cristiano is clearly more amused by her recklessness than I am. If we didn’t already know about her great-aunt, it would have taken us less than ten minutes to figure out. It won’t be hard for others to verify her story either.
Daniela is out of her league. While parts of her plan are solid, most of it’s amateurish, with gaps big enough to drive a tank through.
“Since her father had only one aunt, yeah—that would be the one.”
“Did you learn anything else?” Lucas asks impatiently.
Her mouth is warm and sweet, and her hair smells like the orange blossoms that perfume the procession route on Good Friday. But more importantly, I learned that her gorgeous little body tests my self-control in ways that are dangerous.
I don’t share any of this with them.
“She’s a terrible liar.”
“Anything useful—like why she’s leaving?”
“No,” I reply sharply.
We discovered her plan to move to the US a week ago. We’ve managed to cover a lot of ground in that time, but it pisses me off that we still don’t know her precise motivation for fleeing the country. She doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who would shirk her responsibilities here, just to have a fling in the US. Something’s chasing her.
“You still think Abel is behind her leaving?” Cristiano’s voice is tight. He knows my uncle. Abel is capable of anything—including killing his wife.
“One hundred percent,” Lucas spits out, before I can reply.
“I agree. But we shouldn’t rule out anyone. Abel and Tomas could be a red herring.” Whenever there’s a problem, we always look to them first—with good reason, especially in this case.
Daniela showed us her cards at the funeral home. She’s afraid of them. I crack my knuckles to relieve some of the building pressure. “If we allow ourselves to get lured by the obvious, we could get screwed. I trusted Manuel D’Sousa, but I don’t pretend to know everything he had his hands in.”
“Were you able to install the listening devices?” Lucas asks.